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GRETA CUNNINGHAM: From Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. Officials with the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis say priests in the diocese abused 69 children over 50 years. The incidents involve 33 Catholic priests, none of whom is still in active ministry.

The US Conference of Catholic bishops is requiring bishops across the country to provide information about abuse after widespread allegations that some bishops had failed to report sexual abuse to civil authorities and in some cases had protected abusive priests. Gary Schoener is an expert on clergy sex abuse and works with the Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis. He says any child abused by a priest represents a tragedy.

GARY SCHOENER: First of all, no matter how small the number, it's very, very troubling. And within the study that's being done-- of course, we don't know when all of this happened. But the numbers are always troubling, no matter how small.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Some victims' advocates are skeptical that all victims had been accounted for. A spokesman for the Twin Cities archdiocese says no cases of abuse is acceptable, but notes that 33 priests cited represent just 1.1% of the priests who served the archdiocese over the past 50 years.

University of Minnesota veterinarians are caring for more than a dozen starving horses seized from a farm near Sauk Center. Another six horses were found dead, and one had to be put down. The surviving horses were found to be thirsty, starved, and covered in parasites. Most of the horses were expected to survive. The owner of the animals may face felony charges.

The forecast for Minnesota today calls for clear to partly cloudy skies. It will be cold around the region, highs ranging from 5 above in the northwest to 18 above in the southeast. Right now in Duluth, it's partly sunny and 10 above in the Twin Cities, sunshine, 6 above a windchill index of minus 9. That's a news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

GARY EICHTEN: All right, thanks, Greta. It's 6 minutes now past 12:00.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Gisela Konopka, a Minnesota woman who survived the Nazis and went on to win international acclaim for her work with adolescents. Gisela Konopka died this week. She was 93 years old.

Her life's story was almost too amazing to be true, except, of course, it was true. A native of Berlin, Germany, Gisela Konopka was a member of the German resistance to the Nazis. She was a Holocaust survivor. And she was there when the Nazis marched into Vienna.

She recalled telling herself at the time, quote, you must know how it looks when the inferno is beginning on earth. And if I ever get out of this, I must shout. I must tell. I must never, never forget. Gisela Konopka did get away. She managed to survive.

She fled to New York and eventually ended up at the University of Minnesota, where she gained worldwide attention for her work as a professor of social work and founder of the U's Center for Youth Development and Research. Back in 1995, Gisela Konopka told her remarkable story to former Minnesota Public Radio host John Rabe as part of our Voices of Minnesota series.

Konopka told John that her family lived in their small grocery store and was too poor to send her to high school. She says she cried and cried until they finally agreed to find a way to send her to school.

GISELA KONOPKA: I do know that there were books always in the house. And that was wonderful because I could-- since very early, I could pull out books and just look at them. And I couldn't read them right away.

My father was a very, I think today, an upset man who had a heart condition. But at that time, we didn't know that. So he was yelling a lot. And that made me very afraid of him. That was not good. But on the other hand, he loved talking with me.

So I still remember that we walked around the block often when I was maybe eight and nine and a little older. And he discussed every problem of the political world with me. So I have two ways to think of him, as a man you are afraid of because he was yelling and hitting and all the bad things. On the other hand, he was also a man terribly interested in political events.

He showed me how injust the world was. He took me once to a place in Berlin where he showed me and he said, here they killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. And I did not agree, he said, with their political views. But you mustn't kill people. I mean, this is the way I can see my father.

My mother I can see as a woman who-- when I was a teenager, I was very angry because she was, I thought, much too submissive. She would just always be quiet when he got angry. Later, I understood a little bit because she told me that she knew he was sick and that she just didn't want to make it worse, but that I didn't know.

So if you want to know how she raised me, she didn't raise me as a quiet and submissive kind of person. But she was herself, at that time, submissive. The other thing is that they were very concerned with us-- we were three girls-- all of us learning a lot. Learning was very, very important, being good in school.

And I-- that's a time short after World War I, when children went to a school and then they had to decide whether they wanted to go to what was called gymnasium, which is the preparation for the university. And my older sister had got a scholarship, and I wanted it, too.

And there were both parents saying, we don't have the money. We can't have you go to that. And I cried and cried. And I always say I cried myself into school. But they, actually, I think, liked it in some ways, especially my father.

So if you want to how we were raised, a great deal of value on learning. At the same time, no money. So you had to earn your-- I earned-- since I'm 12 years old, I have always earned money for my clothes, for instance. Does that help a little?

JOHN RABE: Sure. Was it odd for the time for your parents to invest some money and some respect in girls, to want to send their girls to school?

GISELA KONOPKA: No. I have to laugh. People always think the women's movement started, I don't know, here after World War II. By no means it did start at that time. I already grew up. I was seven years old when there was a revolution in Germany. And that immediately gave women, for instance, the right to vote.

I didn't realize that there were women who were not allowed to vote from very early on. And as I said, I had a father interested in politics. He subscribed to all the socialist literature, which included a women's magazine. And I read how important it was.

I, from very early on, loved the work, which is all surrounding me, by Kathe Kollwitz, who was one of the great women artists. There were many. It wasn't unusual. I never have considered it unusual for a woman to grow up. My sister wanted to be a doctor. And if the Nazis hadn't come, she would be one. That wasn't unusual.

What we were were much more aware of social distances. We were very low-class. And I don't mean-- how should I say? We had a little store, and we had a place to live, but that was about it. But not at all that-- that was not unusual for girls to be aware of the social circumstances and literature at that time.

I love still today-- my great love has always been literature, philosophy, history. And I read it from very early on.

JOHN RABE: When did you first become aware of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler?

GISELA KONOPKA: Well, we became aware of that very early. The Nazis came to power in 1933, which is when I'm 23 years old. But we are aware of it much earlier because the most significant experience, I think, of my adolescent life was what we called the youth movement, which was not Nazi whatsoever.

That was a revolt against what we called bureaucracy and those stupid adults who didn't know what they were thinking. You know, we were pretty revolutionary very early. And we were very close friends. And we read literature. And we played games. We played plays.

And there was all that marvelous literature by Ernst Toler and by Bertolt Brecht and this theater that is not so well known here. But I could give you other names. So we were very-- when I was 15, 16, 17, we were very aware of social issues very early. And we thought we could make the world a better place.

So when I become 18, 19, I went from Berlin to Hamburg. I'm no more in Berlin. I have to explain. I finished my what you call the entrance or the finishing examination of gymnasium, which is the school that leads you to the university.

But I didn't want to go right away to the university. I was much too imbued with the idea that one has to help the world to be a better place. So I said, I go to Hamburg and work in a factory.

JOHN RABE: Where did that feeling in you arise? Was that from the youth movement or from your parents?

GISELA KONOPKA: It's not that simple. We always think things are that simple. This is why I'm not a pop psychologist who will always tell you everything comes from that. It comes from many areas. And I would talk for the next full hour about influences.

Part of it, as I said, especially my father, but also part of it, a lot of reading. I still can say some of the poetry very out loud today of that time. And it's poetry of, if you want to call it, the revolution and the concern for the poor.

Then it comes from friends who are all very concerned. And so this was there. It was in the air. I tried to join a labor movement. And first I didn't find the right one because some of my friends became very left-wing, and I did not-- interesting enough, I read too much, I think. Or maybe it's good I read so much.

I couldn't become a Marxist because I thought it was not logical. You can't say that the world develops towards getting better and then at the same time you say there has to be a revolution. It seemed to me nonsense.

Also, the many communists I knew were very, I felt, always were very dogmatic. And I liked people. I wanted to be together with a number of people. So to say all these things explained why I searched for a labor movement.

So first, I joined what was, at that time, a part of the Social Democratic party, but it was a more radical part of the youth group. And I became part of that. So this is when I'm about 18 and still go to school.

When I'm through with school, I decided that I cannot just go from school to the university, that this is too comfortable, that I must understand how it is to work in a factory. So I leave Germany and go with very little money to Hamburg.

And that was a great [INAUDIBLE], I know, for my parents. And sometimes when I talk with parents today, I better remember how awful that was. Here they do everything to let that kid finally go to school, and then she goes into a factory.

And I worked as a steelworker for a year in Hamburg. But I had a lot of support already from that youth group to which I belonged. So that was there. I lived very poorly. I always think it's funny when people say they are poor. You live in a room.

I learned a lot. I will never miss that year working in the factory, what it meant to have the same hand movement to have to do for hours and hours, for being yelled at by the supervisor. By finding colleagues who are trying to join a labor union, and they'd get thrown out because they want to belong to a labor union.

One woman to whom I thought I was become friend who looked at my hands and said they are much too clean. What have you been? And certainly, I didn't want to tell her that I had been a partially student. I said, well, I was at home. And then she said, what is that anyhow, a Jew who will work in a factory? I mean, you already got this feeling that people will not understand.

On the other hand, there were wonderful experiences. But when I explained things, I often say I heard the crying of children who were beating up in the courtyards. I can give hundreds of examples that have influenced my feeling, especially for children and young people.

So I was-- and this is the time of unemployment. And before that, there was horrible inflation in Germany. So you lived on practically nothing. There's little things that influence your life, like I sometimes gave some lessons to some people. And there was a woman who took some lessons to me.

And one day when I came and wore a scarf, she said, finally, you wear something decent. You could be pretty if you wanted to. And I was ready to kill her. You know, this-- I had nothing. I hadn't even enough to eat. But it was good for me.

But then I belonged to this labor union movement and also the socialist movement. And there were people who were very interested in education. [INAUDIBLE] became very famous after the Second World War. Anyhow, she said, this is ridiculous. You go back to and study. And you are more valuable if you have studied.

And so I started-- when is it-- I think 1930. So I meanwhile, 20 years old. At the University of Hamburg. And it's an unusual curriculum because it was one of the very few ones that prepared teachers for the elementary schools. But you have to remember at that time, elementary schools were for the poorest there. And I wanted that.

And I could again tell you for hours what happened there. So we will never get through the rest of my life. But to make that very clear is that at that time, I think my studies were exciting. I always say not only were there wonderful professors and I-- William Stern, who later was known in the United States, taught us psychology. And I always quote him when people go about that stupid thing about IQs.

I never forget that. This is before 1933 that William Stern taught us. He had started the idea of the IQ together with Binet. And he said, but don't believe that that determines a person's intelligence. It only determines how much they can learn in school. I thought that was so wonderful. And here this-- I still remember, he came back from America and said, what have they done to my IQ? They take it so personally.

This is study. It was very exciting. And that was very exciting work. Now, you ask me, when did you become aware of the Nazis? Very early. And I say it in the book that I wrote, I'm very annoyed with people told me that they didn't know about the Nazis. We knew very early, by about 1931, '32, what the Nazis were.

They were already terror in the streets. Now, they were not in power. And I remember them demonstrating with-- what is it called? Well, they weren't allowed to carry weapons. But they were carrying something-- spades-- over their shoulders and were singing "We Will Wait." That's a song, that the Jewish blood flows from our-- flows around or something like that.

And we were very aware of that, that they would kill everybody. We were very active against them. We all distributed leaflets against them. Kathe Kollwitz wrote a wonderful call in the very early 1932 against them. Remember, the fascists had already come to Italy. We were very aware of that.

And so nobody can tell me that you didn't know. You didn't want to know. Most people don't want to know the bad things.

So I'm in Hamburg. I'm no more in Berlin. And so 1933 comes. And Hindenburg makes Hitler the Reichskanzler, the chancellor. And we knew that this is the end of all our hopes, and we who thought we would make the world a better place. We just knew it was-- and I can tell one story after another about the terror.

JOHN RABE: And yet you began to work for the resistance.

GISELA KONOPKA: That's right.

JOHN RABE: At the same time, you were thinking that all your hopes were shattered. How come?

GISELA KONOPKA: This is all my life. There is a word in German that says, "Trotz alledem," in spite of everything. You have to stand up for what you believe in. You cannot allow bad forces to simply take over. That is just not allowed. You have to do what you can.

I think that's partially my present guilt that I live comparatively comfortably and can't do so much anymore. But I say to myself, what would I do going to Croatia? It wouldn't help very much because my legs will give out. But otherwise, no. You always have to stand up for what you believe in.

So there were holes I could-- I could give a lot of experiences of that happened at the university of people suddenly telling how much Nazis they were. And when I said, well-- and one of the girls, for instance, colleagues, said, you know, the Jews smell, and they are dirty, and they're filthy. And I said, well, I sat next to you. Did you ever smell I'm a Jew? Don't make any fun. You're not a Jew. That kind. But--

JOHN RABE: You told her, in fact, I'm a Polish Jew. And we're supposed to be the smelliest.

GISELA KONOPKA: Which is even worse.

JOHN RABE: Yeah.

GISELA KONOPKA: These are the worst. You know, the eastern Jews are the very worst. But this goes-- I mean, there's my examinations. My finishing was just in the beginning. I think it's April or something like that of '33 when-- people imagine that you go into an examination or a final examination of the university, when the evening before, the Nazi police had come to your house and torn everything apart because-- house. I don't mean house. The room. And threw around pictures and books and said, all those awful people, those damn Jews.

Look at that. You can see how they are all full of naked people. Now, these naked people were Michelangelo. But this is what they were doing. And so there was also an interview. I mean, interview. A policeman who came one evening. And he looked at me, and finally at the end, he said, well, I will not take you with me because we just don't do anything against us.

It's too complicated to tell all this, how we decided to make small groups. You couldn't do anything in the open anymore. We knew about terror. We knew all these things. Well, you go into an examination with all that. So I remember I've always lived on a bicycle, going with a bicycle to the university. First go to the washroom and throw up because I was much too upset.

And then you take an examination like the good Germans do with the one professor who's already thrown out by the university but is still allowed to give an examination with the one on the one side of the table and on the other side, the Brownshirts sitting, watching what we are doing.

I can't describe all this. But I finished. And I hate to say it was-- what do you call that-- was extraordinary or something like that. I think there's a word for that that I can't think of right now. It's very high grades.

JOHN RABE: Cum laude?

GISELA KONOPKA: Cum laude. Yeah. But-- and then one of the professors who, meanwhile, had become a Nazi, but who has always supported me-- and I came in and said goodbye. And he said, well, you will be the genius of our coming schools. And I said, no, I will never be employed.

I'm, one, Jewish. And I don't agree with the Nazis. And he said, I never forget. Isn't there a little mouse hole that we can get you through? But he didn't. And nobody did. So--

JOHN RABE: Would you have gone through that little hole if they had provided it?

GISELA KONOPKA: No. I mean, we don't-- anyhow, you couldn't. And there are many stories of that early time, children in school telling me that suddenly the teachers that were first friendly were suddenly wearing swastikas. You have to remember, people suddenly became totally different. You couldn't trust anybody anymore.

JOHN RABE: And yet at the same time, you're very careful to outline that not only were there many Jews in the resistance, there are many--

GISELA KONOPKA: That's right. Many others.

JOHN RABE: --non-Jews.

GISELA KONOPKA: Well, I had, meanwhile, as I said, the support of that socialist group that was very, very clear about that. They stood against the Nazis. And the most important one to me was also the one who later became my husband. But we couldn't get married right away, anyhow, because he was not Jewish. And I was.

And Paul was, I think, basically my strength in many other ways. Yes, I had something brought with me, but I've never forgotten. And that, to me, is probably one of the most important moment of my life that I will never forget. I had finished my examination. I met him. And we walked on the dikes overlooking the Elbe. That's the river in Hamburg.

And I said to him, look, there's the water. Let me go into it. It's no use. I will not be able to do anything. And you will be only harmed by having a Jewish friend. So let me just go down there. And I've never forgotten that this man did not, what I guess I expected, you know, puts his arms around me and says, poor little thing.

No, he didn't. He got angry. He said, hey, what are you talking about? We are doing the same thing together. I'm just as much against them as you are. I cannot find a Jewish ancestor. Too bad. But we can fight them together. And we will continue until they take us.

And this is so significant. And Paul always said, [SPEAKING GERMAN]. We need people without fear. And I have to tell you, at age 85, I have to tell that occasionally to myself when I see some of the awful things that go into the world. And I have to say, we need that. We need people who are without fear.

Roosevelt said that much later, I suddenly think. What was that what he said?

JOHN RABE: We have nothing to fear--

GISELA KONOPKA: We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Yes. So this is when you say-- this helped. And we simply-- that's another story. The resistance-- people always talk about the resistance. That didn't exist, certainly, because you couldn't. You couldn't talk anymore to anybody who you didn't know. You could only talk to people you knew before, whom you could trust.

I think there are many stories that have made me, all of us, very angry. And that's why I wrote this one book, Courage and Love, where I described it. For instance, this recently was something in the paper. And a very good-- I forgot her name-- writer wrote, why did nobody stand up against the bullies?

But there were people who stood up against the bullies. But the world doesn't know about them. They're not famous. They know about one or two whose name became famous. There were a lot that stood up against the bullies. They were killed very quickly.

They were also killed-- I always said, I'll die here without a name, without anybody knowing about it. That happened all over. And not only that, I think another thing to remember is that the Nazis had a way immediately of making impossible any kind of communication.

You can't read in the papers anything about anybody. You cannot talk to anybody you don't know for a long time. So if you don't have that, there is not the resistance. It doesn't become that. The little groups here and little groups there who do something-- this year I have been back in Berlin for a week.

And I'm glad they showed us-- oh, I know it. Anyhow, it's Plötzensee. It's the prison where they decapitated people and did all these horrible things. And you should see the little brochure.

There are people-- they are Catholics. There are Jews. There are Protestants. There are socialists. There are communists. There are-- there's one who belonged to the Mormons that fought the Nazis, were decapitated in that place. But they wouldn't know about from each other. We didn't.

So what I'm saying is this was a small group to which I belonged. And I think we did what we could. Get leaflets out. Show resistance that people know there is something. But that's as much-- and very quickly people are either killed off or put in prison. And I was pretty early in there, 19-- I never know years. I think it's 1935 or '36 that I get into the concentration camp.

So, you know, the concentration camps did not start with Auschwitz. And I think these were the worst. So they were really the horrors. Because they were the extermination camps. And they brought people in who really hadn't done anything, hadn't even fought the Nazis.

But the concentration camps existed very early. And I have always said, I was not-- I don't feel I was a victim. I was a fighter. And I feel much better about that.

JOHN RABE: Does it amaze you that they let you out of prison, out of the concentration camp?

GISELA KONOPKA: No, it didn't amaze me at all. They did that to other people, too. I wasn't long time in it. This wasn't yet Auschwitz. I wouldn't be alive if it were. There were other extermination camps. And in the one in which I was, in Fuhlsbuttel, lots of people were hanged, I want you to know. And I have all that material.

But no, this doesn't surprise me at all because they did that with other people. They released them to find out where they went and whom they met.

JOHN RABE: As bait.

GISELA KONOPKA: It was a very clear message that you become bait. The fortunate thing is that some of us had meanwhile learned all these things. We knew that. So I knew that the moment I was out, I wasn't, the way I felt, worth anything anymore because I couldn't fight them anymore.

There was no way. I couldn't meet my friends. I couldn't. So I could go back to the place which was a little room in some family, because that I could do. There were my things. I told them what happened. One had a friend who was her friend.

And I said, you can tell him this is the way. It's very-- I don't think in a free society one can understand these kind of things. And then I very quickly went to my mother. And I was allowed. You can go to your mother. And they watched.

And they were pretty-- you know. And I had to get her out of the country very quick. And it's very complex how I got out of the country.

JOHN RABE: All this time, when you were working in the resistance and doing other things, were you also working on the foundation of the ideas that would lead toward your writings, your studies in the troubles of adolescence and adolescent girls?

GISELA KONOPKA: I don't think I worked on it. But it has influenced me greatly. All the things that I have done later in the United States-- and that's much later. That comes after another prison in Austria and after horrible things in France. I don't need to-- it will be too long.

But I didn't study them. But I experienced so much. For instance, I still think that we could stop our violence by being very different with young people. I am very concerned that we are beginning to hate our young people. And the moment you are putting hate against somebody, they hate back.

So I saw that. And later in the United States, I had time to study. But it's not from books. It's much from experience. For instance, this business of gangs-- I'm jumping far out. I have written about it. And I don't think I can write much more because I've written so much.

But I am so concerned that we are just saying bad gangs, you know, put them in prison. Well, the gangs partially gives them a sense of security. Kids that are very afraid of things, that are living under fear, living under violence, getting beaten up at home, they find finally others with whom they can join.

This is what I think. The enormous power of groups and of friendship, it's great. It's not bad. It becomes bad when that power is used for violence against others. So if we could work with gangs-- and I know some younger friends who have worked with gangs. We can work with them and give them outlets for their energy and a sense of we are important. Then they will not have to hate so much and so much violence.

I had a wonderful experience only a few weeks ago. The Home School, the Hennepin County Home School for delinquents, who does, I'm sure, not do everything right-- none of us does. And it's much too much overfilled-- showed plays. And there were several of these youngsters involved.

And a wonderfully gifted young director, theater director had worked with those boys. And you should have seen what they did. These are young people we think are horrible and mean. And they probably have done mean things. There they were telling their story, but not oh, dear, oh, dear. I'm the victim, but with a certain pride. Not what they did, but what they could be.

I have the-- how do you call that-- the script here. And it starts out with a sentence of Langston Hughes. What happens to a dream deferred? And they used that as a jumping-off point. And they were superb. And there were young people-- they're all twice as tall as I am. And they are Afro-Americans and Hmong and white and everything.

And they were working together at that. I always would love-- I wished I had a video of that when they finished and they got the applause. Then they walked down from the stage. Now, the superintendent, Terry Wise, I think did a wonderful thing. She had a bunch of roses. And she gave each one of those boys a rose.

And they walked down that whole length of the theater, each one with a rose in their hands. When have these kids have had a rose in their hand, any flower in their hand? And then was a reception. And I talked with one of the kids. And I said, you were really excellent.

And I will never forget-- as I say, twice as tall as I. And he pushed up his arms and he said, yes, yes, I know. We were wonderful. We are marvelous. We are the future. These are delinquents. These are gangs.

But much more must happen. I believe in art. When I can't sleep-- and there are many nights I can't sleep-- there are only two things that put me to sleep. I say poetry to myself because I learned it. Or I get up and write.

Now they can paint. We don't do this enough with young people. We don't give them a sense that there are others who think as us who can express themselves. And you can too. You don't know-- I mean, yes, you do know. But I mean, many people don't know what I have seen happening to dark-skinned teenagers.

When I quoted Langston Hughes-- night coming tenderly, Black like me. Night coming tenderly, Black like me. I say we don't talk about tenderness. We only talk about fought and fighting.

Excuse me. I get on my horse at this moment. I get away from my story. But it's experiences have influenced me. I have been spit in the face by a tall, black-clad, one of those Nazis that are in the concentration camps. And he was yelling at me. And he was telling me all the bad things that I was and spat in my face.

And I still think humiliation is one of the worst things. And the anger that rises in you is horrible. Is absolutely horrible. And if I hadn't, I still think I was lucky because I had so much inner things, knowing that this man isn't worth anything if he does that to me.

I have always said, and I've later used it in other occasions, I felt like I was wearing a raincoat, and that stuff was just running down. But we give that to our children if we can give them a sense of inner pride and not just pride, not this-- respect is very wonderful, but also a sense of tenderness.

JOHN RABE: Why were so many kids involved? In your youth, why were so many involved in the youth movement when today, there are so many kids who are involved in gangs and delinquency?

GISELA KONOPKA: One, there are many kids here also involved in youth movements and in very, very helpful things. We only don't write about them. So that's number one. Two, when I grew up, it were not the majority either. It was always a minority that was that concerned.

I belonged to them. But it wasn't everybody, either. Let's face it. There were quite a lot that were not. In addition to that, if power lies on the other side, then you join them. I mean, the many kids that joined the Nazi party, that was their excitement.

And it was nice to beat up on somebody, right? I always say, human beings have both-- and I'm included-- good and bad in them. So it depends what you are pulling out. No, I don't think this was so different.

I never talk about the good old times. They weren't so good. And we weren't so good. It was a comparatively small group. All I'm saying is [INAUDIBLE].

JOHN RABE: What do you think the divorce rate, the very high divorce rate has done to juvenile delinquency in the United States?

GISELA KONOPKA: It's not divorce. It's a question of how do people relate to each other, who are either married or not married. It's not the legal separation. It's a separation of thinking that you-- again, the expectations.

I have sometimes talked with people who were rather close. What's the expectation? You should never fight with each other? That's just a foolish expectation, this idea that because you get married, it will be always sweetness and light. The expectation is that you always will have enough money.

The expectation is that-- well, then come the expectations that, I think, come from very old times. You do what I told you. Many years ago I thought that actually we are moving into a better relationship in marriage because we have-- I thought we had moved into a respect for every member of a family.

The father is not anymore which we all come from. We come from the most tyrannical societies, all of us. But it seemed to me it was getting better. The father wasn't anymore seen as the only one who has something to say. The mother was in an equal position. And the children were also respected according to their ages and what they could do.

It seemed good. It hasn't quite turned out that way. I know that. But I do think the separation of families is very sad and very harmful. Again, not because they're legally separate, but because the children do not-- children have to expect-- no. Have to experience, I always say, three basic things.

One is love and tenderness. And they belong together. The second is respect, that they see people respect each other and that they are respected. And three, stimulation. That is what children need to grow up.

And we do-- we make so many other things that we say are necessary. This is the basic things. I don't think that the family always was better. Don't think that. There were terrible things going on in families hidden. Maybe they were not openly divorced. They were doing it in the secret.

I have no-- I have lots of-- I'm an old historian, so I have some very interesting books that I sometime use when I'm speaking to people, like The Diary of a Young Girl, which was written in Vienna in the-- well, before 1900. And there she describes what went on in that family. That was a good, good middle-class family.

But there the beatings that were hidden-- I don't think the families were all better, no. If we tell young people all the time that everything was better, then why should they have hope for themselves or the future? We have to tell them the basic things that are necessary.

If you have a friend, and you want to trust a friend, then respect that friend. And if you want to have relationships with a person, it has to be on a respectful base.

JOHN RABE: How do you turn them around, though? If we haven't invested respect in our teenagers, for instance, how do you teach them what respect is?

GISELA KONOPKA: One, don't say "in our teenagers." It's not all of them. I always say that over and over. I don't want to indict our youth. See, we do that right now. Again, we far too much indict all use. And then we are surprised how wonderful things they do. And they do wonderful thing, just marvelous things that I see some teenagers do. So let's say that first.

JOHN RABE: Let's talk, then, about the troubled youth.

GISELA KONOPKA: The ones who have done pretty serious things-- first of all, don't tell them that we were always so hot. I mean, we were not perfect, either. So you say, so you do things that are wrong. So let's look what we can do right.

But to me, the basic thing is to involve them. Talk with them. Not just always tell them with a raised finger what they have to do. But that is very important. I have seen it working in institutions when I sit down with them, and I say, all right, you now decide. What do you think could be done differently?

Let them build it up and help together with them. We have to work. The word whiz is, to me, underlined. I'm doing a little bit work with something in Saint Paul. And I think they do a good job in what they call safe city. And that was one of my basic suggestions, that in the neighborhoods, don't only make programs for-- we may always make programs for.

Get a bunch of kids. And let them sit with you, thinking through what can be done. Participation is a base for democracy. And if we don't do it, we will have dictatorships. I don't know whether I make myself clear. It's so difficult.

JOHN RABE: One of the things you've gotten on me about a number of times during this interview is in making blanket statements.

GISELA KONOPKA: Yeah.

JOHN RABE: Then I'm doing it in part to get an answer from you.

GISELA KONOPKA: It's all right.

JOHN RABE: But also in your book, you write, for instance, how, in your youth, some people studied Freud, some people studied Adler. You were part of the Adler camp. But you still thought that Freud had some good points.

GISELA KONOPKA: Yeah.

JOHN RABE: You then write about how you were surprised how in the United States we embraced Freud, and then we tossed him out the window entirely. We didn't reach some kind of compromise on Freud. Just as an example.

And it seems to me that maybe part of what you're saying is that there is this polarization in American society. We want absolute yes or absolute no, black or white. We have a hard time embracing, for instance, teenagers who seem to be torn, pulled from both sides. They're just a mass of contradictions.

GISELA KONOPKA: Yeah. And the moment you say that, then I begin to get also myself into a generalization. And I'll just say it. I've often said, this is such an exciting country with all this variety, but it's run by fads, F-A-D-S. You have to be one way only, and that is for a while, but so exaggerated.

You cannot expect that people can have different kinds of feeling. Sometimes I say I'm like the fiddler on the roof, on the one hand and on the other hand. But that's very difficult, usually, for Americans to accept. This is a still very action-oriented country.

And they are-- now, this is generalizations. Very often, it has to be one way or the other way. And we all-- children have to obey. That's now gone, I think. But then comes a time, oh, let them all be free. Do whatever they want to. Now that they can't do either. But that comes for a while.

And then to find this thing in the middle is very difficult. That's true. And that is a problem. I myself think if one could be less absolute-- there are some very absolute values that I adhere to that I will not go away one step.

The basic one is a respect for every single human being, regardless where they come from, how they look, what they do, and so on. That, to me, is a very basic value. But beyond that, there can be a great variety.

Right now, for instance, a friend of mine has a 14-year-old nephew. And I think it's almost-- now I can say it's almost funny. He's Jewish. And he shaves his head. Well, to me, that looks like a Nazi. I haven't seen him, but that would be, you know, all skinhead.

But to him, that's not what it is. And I have to understand that. To him, he is one like these wonderful basketball players. I give that only as an example how one has to understand what goes on in somebody else's head.

But the respect for everybody, that is something that, from the beginning, one has to install, I think, in people. I have to see whether I find that because somebody else says that better than I. And I thought I had that quote somewhere. And if I find it, I'll read it to you.

Oh, yeah. This was actually Thurgood Marshall. And can I read that quote? Because I like it so much. People are people. Strike them, and they will cry. Cut them, and they will bleed. Starve them, and they will wither away and die.

But meet them with respect and decency, give them equal access to the levers of power, attend to their aspirations and grievances, and they will flourish and grow and join together to form a more perfect union. He says it better than I can say it.

GARY EICHTEN: Internationally acclaimed University of Minnesota scholar Gisela Konopka, speaking back in 1995 with former Minnesota Public Radio host John Rabe as part of our Voices of Minnesota series. Gisela Konopka died on Tuesday, but no doubt about it, her legacy lives on.

The University of Minnesota's Konopka Institute bears her name and carries on her work. She was 93 years old when she died this week. A memorial service will be scheduled at a later time.

Well, that does it for our Midday program today. We're going to be rebroadcasting this interview with Gisela Konopka at 9 o'clock tonight. And of course, it will also be available on our website, MinnesotaPublicRadio.org.

Tomorrow, Mike Mulcahy will be here for our Midday program. He'll be filling in. And should be a good program tomorrow. Congressman Mark Kennedy will join Mike during the first hour to talk about toll roads and other issues over the noon hour.

We'll have some highlights from tomorrow's Mondale Forum, which focuses on American security and America's role in the world. That's tomorrow on Midday.

ANNOUNCER: Programming is supported by Triple Espresso, a highly caffeinated comedy, a home-grown show created to make you laugh until you cry appearing now at the Music Box Theater. Tickets available online at tripleespresso.com.

GARY EICHTEN: You're tuned to 91.1 KNOW FM.